The Italian JobThe old-world values that define the component maker Campagnolo make it so beloved by the faithful that they describe it as a soul instead of a brandâ€”which in today's cost-cutting, outsourced business world is exactly the company's problem. And, perhaps, its salvation.

ByBruce Barcott

This is a fable about emotion, but it starts as a business story. For the past half century the Italian component maker Campagnolo and its chief competitor, the Japanese conglomerate Shimano, have gone toe-to-toe in one of the great rivalries not just of the cycling world but of the entire business world. The elements intrigue those who study such things: Despite their near-comic contrast in sizeâ€”Shimano's bicycle-division sales were $2.1 billion last year, Campagnolo's around $150 millionâ€”the companies have considered each the other's greatest foe. Over the years, the spirit of that rivalry infected their customers. Road cyclists can be passionate about their choice of components, but none are more notoriously passionate than Campy freaks. They wax eloquently about the curves and swooping lines of new components, create personal museums of old parts, can be stunned into silence and immobility by the sight of a complete boxed Campy tool set.

Campagnolo traditionally had been seen as owning the top 1 percent of the cycling market, the high-end professional and custom-build customer, while Shimano was considered to dominate OEM (original equipment manufacturer)â€”its components, ubiquitous on mass-production bikes made by major players, at times have been found on as many as 70 percent of all bikes made.

Campagnolo was also traditionally acknowledged as the choice of champions. Eddy Merckx rode only Campy. Bernard Hinault rode Campy to all five of his Tour de France victories. So did Miguel Indurain. Of course the Italian champions Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi rode Campy. But the last Tour winner to ride a Campagnolo gruppo under the Arc de Triumph was Italy's Marco Pantani in 1998. (The inevitable asterisk of modern sports: Oscar Pereiro, who was declared the 2006 winner after a failed drug test negated Floyd Landis's victory, rode Campagnolo.) Lance Armstrong won seven yellow jerseys on Shimano gear. When he retired in 2005, many insiders assumed Campagnolo would do whatever it took to make sure the next winner was on its componentry. But Shimano won in 2007 and 2008. Then things became really bleak for Campy: The upstart SRAM stole the crown. A Chicago company that found its first success by selling handlebar shifters for mountain bikes in the 1980s, SRAM didn't put out its first road-bike group until 2005. But just four years later, in 2009, Spain's Alberto Contador won the Tour on the company's top groupset, Red. Contador and SRAM won again in 2010, before Shimano took over again in 2011, under Cadel Evans.

Campy's problems aren't limited to the Tour de France podium. Today's younger generation of riders generally assume they can't afford Campagnolo's gear and aren't impressed with its historic pedigree. Older, more affluent riders still covet the brand's cachet, but, as one industry insider observes: "When all of us 50-year-old guys with $6,000 bikes get too old, fat, and lazy, what are they going to do?"

The rise of SRAM cuts to the heart of Campagnolo's dilemma. When SRAM introduced its first road-bike groupset six years ago, Campagnolo ignored the American upstart. That was a mistake. Nimble and smart, SRAM rose quickly to challenge the Shimano-Campagnolo duopoly. SRAM's engineers developed new products quickly and outsourced production to factories that could make the products at a lower cost. When I asked Michael Zellman, SRAM's global marketing manager, if I could stop by and see the Chicago factory, he said, "Sure, but there's not much here to see. We manufacture in 15 locations all over the world."

About 95 percent of the bicycles and components sold today originate in Taiwan or China. But not Campagnolo's. The company sticks stubbornly to its roots, manufacturing in its birthplace of Vicenza, Italy, a midsize industrial city between Venice and Milan. Campagnolo employs high-cost labor and hews to oldworld values. Red wine is served in the lunch room. A few years ago the company finally opened a second plant outside of Italy. It's not in China or Taiwan. It's inâ€”get thisâ€”Romania.

Some industry observers and competitors see the future closing in on Campy. "In an international industry and an international world, they can't survive strictly in Italy," said Gary Coffrin, an industry consultant and former executive at Specialized. "Sometimes it seems like Campagnolo's off in Vicenza in its own world," said Matt VanEnkevort, managing director of FSA USA, the American distributor of Full Speed Ahead components. "They've failed to globalize as a brand, failed to respond to the market when the market's shifted."

Take VanEnkevort's quote with a grain of salt. FSA is, after all, a competitor. But he raises a valid question. In an outsourced world, in which supply chains stretch around the globe and labor goes for a dime on the dollar in Asia, many wonder how long an old-school Italian company like Campagnolo can survive.

In the United States, Campagnolo officials are all too aware of the challenge. "We're in a 'What have you done for me lately?' situation," says Tom Kattus, head of Campagnolo North America,the company's stateside subsidiary. Back in Italy, though, no alarm bells are ringing. Valentino Campagnolo, the inscrutable and elegant Italian gentleman who runs the family-owned company, acknowledges that SRAM is "a new player, a strong player, a clever player." But Campagnolo, 63, appears undisturbed by the company's position in the marketplace.

How does he plan to keep the company alive? By doing what Campagnolo has always done. He's going to nurture and protect a mysterious force known around Vicenza as "the knowledge." It's an idea with deep roots in Italian culture. And while others in the bicycle industry predict doom for Campy's business model, some forward-thinking economists believe the Italian company may be on to something. After a decade-long outsourcing rush, a number of businesses are beginning to rethink the wisdom of manufacturing on the cheap in Asia. Signore Valentino's oldschool business model just might be the new new thing.

Drivers on the Milan-to-Venice autostrada know they're passing Vicenza when they see the Campagnolo factory sign, a 120-foot, royal blue version of founder Tullio Campagnolo's signature, one of the world's most understated yet recognizable logos. The company's headquarters and main manufacturing facility are located in a sprawling three-story plant in the light-industrial zone on the outskirts of town. The compound was built in 1981, and the executive suites retain a cool late-1970s vibe: modern, dimly lit, low-ceilinged, and hushed. It was there I met Lerrj (pronounced "Larry") Piazza, the company's young marketing and communications manager, who agreed to show me around. Like everyone else at Campagnolo, Piazza dressed impeccably, in a fine Italian shirt, slacks, and a cashmere cardigan. A bicycleâ€”a Colnago with Campagnolo Record componentsâ€”leaned against the wall in his office.

"Welcome to Campagnolo," Piazza said. "We have time to see the facility before your interview with Mr. Campagnolo."

He said this as if I had booked time with the Pope.

On the day I visited, a Tuesday in early March, the factory was relatively quiet. "We are switching over from the 2011 production year to 2012," Piazza explained. "So there are a number of workers here, but not everyone." Campagnolo employs about 400 people in Vicenza. Like most Italian workers, they are strongly unionized and well paid. The average Italian metalworker makes about $43,000 a year. In Taichung, Taiwan, the world center of bicycle manufacturing, factory labor goes for about $7,250 a year. In China, it can be had for $3,700.

It wasn't hard to be impressed by Campagnolo's operation. The airy manufacturing complex could house a fleet of 747s, but it's not driven by an assembly-line mindset. Campagnolo's machinists ply their craft at autonomous tooling stations. Components are dropped into small-batch metal bins the size of laundry baskets, which are then hand-wheeled to the next station. The factory floor was clean enough to lick.

Piazza guided me to a progressive stamping die, a 30-foot monster that sent out a shuddering whump! every two seconds. It felt and sounded like the company's beating heart. I watched as steel tape was fed into one end. Newborn Campagnolo Super Record cogs emerged from the other. A machinist in blue coveralls picked a random cog and held it to his eye like a diamond cutter. There are almost no traditional assembly lines at the Campagnolo factory. Each machinist works like an artisan. There's a bit of the Renaissance guild about the place. Which is no coincidence; the artisan-guild concept was created just a few hours south of here, in Florence, in the 12th century.

"The company is very strange and complex," Piazza told me. "It's a mechanical company and also a chemical company." All the surfaces and finishes are produced here. "The knowledge is very complicated," Piazza said. "It takes a lot of years to build up this know-how. It's not impossible to make a product like this but you need the knowledge, born of experience, to solve problems, to always improve."

The knowledge. Company officials speak of it like Obi-Wan spoke of The Force. It is something at once powerful and fragile. It is the reputation of the brand and the combined know-how of the engineers, designers, and machinists gathered under one roof in Vicenza. And it is guarded ferociously.

As we walked through the 11-speed-chain assembly room, I spotted a row of enclosed offices and asked what they housed. Piazza paused, then said, "Electronic gruppo development."

My ears perked up. After more than a decade in development and of anticipation from cyclists, Campy's battery-powered gruppo was about to hit the market. Few outside the company or the Movistar pro team, which had been selected to road-test it through the 2011 season, had gotten even a glimpse. Shimano, which began its electronics R&D years after Campagnolo, has been selling its Dura-Ace Di2 electronic groupset since 2009. Shimano's Di2 gear goes for around $5,000, double the price of top-end Shimano, SRAM, and Campagnolo components. At Campagnolo, executives believe their gear has to be the absolute bestâ€”and work flawlesslyâ€”from day one. Otherwise the brand takes a hit. Piazza had no intention of letting me anywhere near the group's development department, because the components hadn't debuted to the public yet, but also because it was full of prototypes, earlier generations and, presumably, ideas that had failed along the way.

"It is not available to us," he said with a smile, and led me away.

The knowledge must be protected.

The electronic gruppo problem illustrates a larger dilemma for Campagnolo. Its engineers must not only compete with a company more than 10 times its size. Their executives must not only find profit margins while paying 10 times the hourly wage of its competitors. In Vicenza, you get the distinct impression that Campagnolo executives feel as if they also must shoulder the burden of guarding the soul of cycling itself.

Certainly few companies are as steeped in the history of the sport. Founder Tullio Campagnolo's handmade delivery bicycle, circa World War I, stands in the hallway outside the executive suites. The back cover of a lavish, 159-page corporate history published on the company's 75th anniversary in 2008 proclaimed, "The history of Campagnolo is the story of modern cycling."

That's a bold claim. It also happens to be true. Tullio, a promising young racer in the 1920s, famously experienced one of cycling's great epiphanies during a race in 1927. That spring he found himself riding up to Croce d'Aune, a mountain pass in Italy's southern Dolomites. At the time, shifting gearsâ€”there were only twoâ€”required the rider to dismount, unscrew the rear wheel, flip it around so a different-size cog on the opposite side could be used, then reattach the screws. On the mountain that day Tullio's freezing fingers proved no match for a stubborn wingnut. As he watched the race slip away, his frustration led to invention. Over the next three years, Tullio tinkered in his father's shop to create the world's first quick-release skewerâ€”the taken-for-granted component that today lets cyclists remove a wheel with a single flip of a cam lever.

Campagnolo expanded into other components, establishing a reputation for innovation and unsurpassed quality. Tullio, a broad bull of a man with a powerful voice and piercing gaze, worked closely with top pro riders and with frame builders in the artisan towns of northern Italy: Faliero Masi, Edoardo Bianchi, and Ernesto Colnago. For a 30-year stretchâ€”from 1968 to 1998â€” Campagnolo dominated the pro peloton. In the Tour de France, 27 of 31 winners rode Campy. In the Giro d'Italia, Campy won 26 of 31 titles.

The company's DNA was established during those years. Tullio never wanted the mass market. His heart and soul were in the high-end stuff, the pro gear. During the bike boom of the 1970s, when every family in America kept a quiver of Schwinns in the garage, Campagnolo refused to expand to meet low-end demand.

"I went over to Vicenza to work with Tullio on developing some Schwinn pedals in 1973," recalled Jay Townley, a bicycle-industryconsultant who worked for Schwinn during the boom years. "The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission was making manufacturers add pedal reflectors for safety. I showed Tullio a reflector we could put in the openings of those old rat-trap pedals. He looked at the pedal, frowned, and said 'Brutto! Brutto!'" Ugly! Ugly!

Crude design offended the old man. Campagnolo's designers strove for elegance in the engineering sense of the word: Finding the simplest, lightest, most efficient solution to the problem of human-powered propulsion. Given a choice between his own beliefs and the fortune to be made in the mass market, Tullio turned his back on the fortune. By the end of the 1970s, Campagnolo had abandoned all but the pro racing and very top luxury portion of the specialty retail market to Shimano and Suntour, Japanese companies that were happy to scale up production to meet the demand for less expensive chains, sprockets, and derailleurs.

That refusal to compromise quality moved Campagnolo from a company to a cause. Some call it a cult. It's a symbol of old-world artisan craftsmanship, a refusal to compromise twinned with manly know-how, seasoned with a tinkerer's curiosity and a dash of machismo. The classic film Breaking Away captured the mystique in the character of Dave Stohler, a blue-collar Indiana kid enthralled by Italian cycling culture. His pride and joy was a Masi road bike equipped with Campagnolo gear.

Lorenzo Taxis, Campagnolo's global marketing manager, described the power of the Campagnolo name: "It is a soul," he said. "It is a soul contained by a brand."

That's a heavy burden. Perhaps that's why, long after Campagnolo must have realized there was a market for electronic shifting, it continued to refine its product in those secret rooms while Shimano offered its version for sale. At Campagnolo, there is a sense that the company must weigh each product against the culture of cycling itself. "We must ask whether this product is not democratic, let's say," Lerrj Piazza told me. "It is a social thing. It's not logical to put a product on the market which is not touchable by the people" because of its high price.

There's also the risk of putting the Campagnolo imprimatur on a product that could pollute the purity of cycling. Officials in Vicenza are mum on this point, but at least one competitor is also struggling with the issu

Thanks for posting this interesting article. There are interesting facets to their philosophy.They missed at indexing and mountainbiking when it happened. Well made, cool to own, but Shimano just worked better! They may be expensive top end gear but I have been buying Veloce (online) partly because it seems to be the cheapest best quality components around?? I aso like Campag so that's a bias. I rebuilt a rusted Record Ergolever with a cheap lever and I couldn't really spot the difference internally.It's definitely the vibe though. And the cool winged lever logo.

If only they'd been as smart (or obstinate) as Campagnolo...in fact, I think the Campagnolo people well know that trying to compete directly with Shimano on everything is no good for the long term prospects of their company. At least I'd like to think so.

So we get the leaders we deserve and we elect, we get the companies and the products that we ask for, right? And we have to ask for different things. – Paul Gildingbut really, that's rubbish. We get none of it because the choices are illusory.

Methinks you may have nailed the most salient point there Drub'. There's no way they could compete on a level playing field so they have filled a niche for people who realise the "vibe" is important. At least they don't have the myriad problems possible that plague Ital cars. Lancia Beta for example, marvelous to drive but a horror to keep driveable.

...whatever the road rules, self-preservation is the absolute priority for a cyclist when mixing it with motorised traffic.London Boy 29/12/2011

I have a big, hard cover double book set here somewhere of the history of Alfa Romeo - the cars were almost an afterthought. Despite the occasionally hilarious translation into English (lucky the Italian is in the next column so you can discern the gist) the fascinating politics of large industrial production in Italy was a real eye opener for me. Drifting in and out of government ownership, the effects of tarrifs and import/export restrictions, government directives to build factories in the south (where the Alfasud was made by a largely uneducated populace), strange deals with eastern europe with substandard steel, trying to collaborate with the Japanese...fantastic stuff. A potted history of Italy as governments struggled with prestige vs. employment, with different political systems, and the vagaries of the US market that should have been paying the bills but never really did...ending with mis-matched joint ventures and finally capitulation as the company was sold to foreigners. It's fascinating Campagnolo just kept on keeping on.

So we get the leaders we deserve and we elect, we get the companies and the products that we ask for, right? And we have to ask for different things. – Paul Gildingbut really, that's rubbish. We get none of it because the choices are illusory.

I had no idea that Campagnolo still made most of it's gruppo products in Italy .. as someone who's just about to buy a Campy gruppo I'm happy to hear it. It's nice to see some people sticking to the old ways despite the futility of it economics-wise.

I run Campag Veloce on both my bikes. I actually bought an Athena 11 speed for my Colnago but the cassette wouldn't fit on the Campag Shamal wheels, so I had fitted the Veloce 10 speed. The Athena and Veloce are pretty similar just less one gear. I didn't go for Record cause in comes in that black plastic finish only, some new fangled material called carbon fibre I think.

One of the big bonuses of Campag over Shimano, which I recently found out, is that when your shifters wear out you can get a rebuild kit for them. Can't be done with Shimano apparently, also if you have Ultegra, you can only replace the shifters in pairs, so maintenance is considerably higher than Campag.

One more thing, remember the war! Sorry not to offend any Japanese, but still. I also once owned an Alfa GTV many years ago, still the best handling car I have ever driven, oh and I love pizza too! Most of all I love my two Italian bikes and I never choose to put any asian component on them as that would be like some foreign company owning Vegemite, xxxx and VB.

faustorider wrote:I run Campag Veloce on both my bikes. I actually bought an Athena 11 speed for my Colnago but the cassette wouldn't fit on the Campag Shamal wheels, so I had fitted the Veloce 10 speed. The Athena and Veloce are pretty similar just less one gear. I didn't go for Record cause in comes in that black plastic finish only, some new fangled material called carbon fibre I think.

One of the big bonuses of Campag over Shimano, which I recently found out, is that when your shifters wear out you can get a rebuild kit for them. Can't be done with Shimano apparently, also if you have Ultegra, you can only replace the shifters in pairs, so maintenance is considerably higher than Campag.

One more thing, remember the war! Sorry not to offend any Japanese, but still. I also once owned an Alfa GTV many years ago, still the best handling car I have ever driven, oh and I love pizza too! Most of all I love my two Italian bikes and I never choose to put any asian component on them as that would be like some foreign company owning Vegemite, xxxx and VB.

Remember the war? Dude, don't play that card in defense of Campagnolo. It just shows that you don't know your history and makes it sound as if you're a teensy bit racist towards Asian people. Under Mussolini, Italy's official army fought for the axis' forces (yes, along with the Germans and Japanese) not the allies until 1943 when they quit the war (gotta love us Italians). Yes, that would be against us!

It was not until 1943 that the Italian resistance movement (some 50,000 men, including my grandfather who later fled to Australia.. yes I'm proudly of Sicilian descent) defected and fought alongside the allies against Mussolini.

Mussolini wanted Italy to fight for the Germans (who all the fascists expected would defeat the allied nations) from the get go but knew Italy couldn't prepare for war against the allies until at least 1942 so they held off declaring war with either party until they were adequately prepared for war. Sneaky, huh?

It's a very convoluted story but essentially your argument of "remembering the war" is an unfounded one, only proving that clearly .. you don't remember the war.

Last edited by lunar_c on Tue Nov 22, 2011 1:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yes "the Pact of Steel" was really about the Germans wanting Italian bikes, to ride.

But really, what about Zeus, a company started before Campagnolo (and the rumour it was a copy )Patented technologies were traded/stolen/swapped and personally think it was the great cheaper alternative.Maybe a great marketing ploy between the companies, at the time

Lone Rider- I rode on the long, dark road... before I danced under the lights.

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